yesterday's personal meltdown & A NEW NATIONAL IDEA.

​Yesterday I arrived at my laptop, at just after 5 am, early to bed, early to rise, to find the Racing App missing. The day had already started badly for me, with my alarm clock failing to awake me (forgot to set the alarm) and several other incidents, mainly involving our ageing cat community, so I was looking forward to sitting down for some ‘me-time’. 
I am rather stupid when it comes to technology. Or machines of any kind, and these days anything that involves following instructions. I am, undiagnosed but not denying the obvious, at stage one and a half demented/dementia. I may even have lived my life on the lower end of the autism spectrum scale. (Honestly, it has taken me ten-minutes and finally a perusal of a medical dictionary to remember the word ‘autism’. Happens to me all the time, these days.)
So, yes, yesterday I had a brain meltdown. You see the problem started back in November when one of the cats – his name is Nutkin -walked across the keyboard and the Racing Post on the desktop disappeared. Luckily, Google had installed the app on the Google menu-board – is that the correct term -, except twice now that too has manifested into the twilight world of the techno ether. I tried to download a new Racing Post app but was thwarted by the unconceivable and mind-minding lack of clear instruction and the melting of what little brain cells I have available to me. Finally, and why I did not go there first I cannot say, I fell upon the Racing Post website and found the newspaper I would have sold my soul to the devil to read. Then, the fog shrouding my brain, as mystifying as the fog that beleaguered Chepstow and Leopardstown over Christmas, navigated its way to my eyes and closed the tab along with all the other tabs I had open. I returned to the Racing Post website, thankful no one was watching me make an utter arse of myself, unable to remember how I found my way to the actual newspaper in the first place. Virtually no short-term memory capacity, these days.
Yes, I contacted the Racing Post Help team and though the app has returned, perhaps of its own volition, I am still to be contacted by ‘the help team’. For all they know I may have carried out my threat to take a hammer to the tablet that should be my safety-net when my laptop is at the menders and killed myself in the process. Oh, I did not mention the added trauma of the Lenovo tablet that refused to play ball, refused to do anything other than drive me closer to the edge of sanity.
No wonder I find myself watching races from the sixties, seventies and eighties. Better days. Simpler days.

I am coming to terms now with the extinction of the Aintree Grand National. I will never fully get over its demise and I doubt I will ever forgive Jockey Club estates for protecting their cash-cow by sacrificing the only race that truly transcended the sport.
You see, the problem is, even if no one else recognises it, is that so many chases throughout the season no longer have any say in the National narrative, in fact, have no other purpose than just being there, given that a horse needs to be rated close to Grade 1 standard to get into the Grand National replacement race, what I now refer to as the ‘Little National.’ In a few weeks, for instance, Haydock stages its Grand National Trial’, except no horse that runs will be unlikely to even be entered for Aintree as its rating will be no higher than 130. It is the same problem now with all races over 4-miles, including Welsh and Scottish Nationals. They are still races of note but they play virtually no part in the narrative that leads to Britain’s formerly greatest horse race. So, why not invent a new race, a race for those horses that find 3-miles too short, yet can plod on for 4-miles plus, with jumping ability their superpower? In days past, every 3-mile handicap had the potential to play a part in the lead-up to Aintree. The opposite is now true. To lace together the 3-mile staying division into a narrative story-line there needs to be a dream to aim for, if only to give the smaller trainer and owner a chance at the sort of glory Aintree has taken from them. 
A 4-mile plus handicap chase with 30-runners and a prize-fund similar to the Little National. Where it should be run is problematic, at least to me, as I do not think Aintree, the obvious host, deserves to have such a race, if it should ever see the light of day. A sort of think Punchestown would be a good fit, especially as they might be able to incorporate part of their banks course to make this new race unique. Perhaps I should write to Punchestown and float the idea, even though finance problems would undoubtedly be a stumbling block. Though the problems of staging such a race would be no greater than William Lynn faced when he came up with the idea of a National in the year that saw the coronation of Queen Victoria. Just for reference, Lynn also inaugurated the Waterloo Cup, a hare-coursing event named after his hotel in Liverpool.
Just suck on this! If Red Rum were around today, just bought by Ginger McCain, a throw-out from a bigger stable, he would not get in the Little National this season or perhaps any season. What if there is a Red Rum running around Catterick or Kelso or Exeter in want of a true test to be seen at his very best? As was the case with Red Rum.
If I win the Lottery in the next few weeks, as long as it is a big-figure windfall, I might invent and sponsor the race and name it after myself. The Knight National. If I could contribute one gift to racing before dementia takes me, it would be a race befitting the shoes of the old Grand National.